Sabre_Justice Posted:

”Sure.” says Zak, and he begins unclasping the armour. Normally he might have been annoyed at being ordered around, but experience has taught him not to mess with the one who seems to know what he’s doing, even if he’s really weird.

You tug at the quick-release spool and the two outer buckles snap from the pressure, splintering uselessly and causing the front mail to fall off the corpse. Strange. The copper in the buckle must have been extremely eroded for it to snap like that.

With the armour off, however, a gruesome sight is revealed. The whole upper torso of the dwarf has been flayed and skinned, the ribcage torn open to reveal the heart and lungs inside. There isn’t much left of the heart or lungs, though: everything inside has shrivelled and turned into a blackened, putrid husk of what it used to be. Within the chest walls you can see a white squirming mess of something, you have no idea what, but it’s definitely still alive.

Cenbuma: The insides have underwent necrosis, as expected, but the wilting is new. Maybe it’s due to the slow rate of natural decomposition that causes the shrivelled drying-out of the organs. The insides are crawling with what appears to be, at first sight, maggots, but there are no flies buzzing around, so it does not make sense for it to be true maggots.

The armour clanks dully onto the earthen floor, the insides of the front completely covered with clotted gore and blood. The back mail, still trapped by the corpse’s position on the floor, remains in place, though you can see that a pool of blood has obviously collected onto it from the spillage.

The air in the cell is now filled with the tart stench of decay mingled with the metallic overture that comes with so much blood.